Thursday, June 28, 2007

Ice Cream

Wait: before you read this, play or download this to get in the mood. Ice cream used to be the American treat. Now it still is, but split between the grocery store type and the snooty Starbucks drinkers. How so? In idyllic 50s through 80s America, the Good Humor man would come down the street, delivering high quality treats and ice cream to the children. Now ice cream trucks often have obnoxious tunes ("It's A Small World") carrying either overpriced licensed treats (such as SpongeBob, Super Mario, or Spider-Man) or obvious knockoffs. However, due to the way things tread, ice cream is slowly changing. We now have the ol' grocery store brand (which can be very good, depending on the brand) or you can go out to your local Cold Stone or Maggie Moo's for the good (ie, high-priced) stuff. We no longer favor Tin Roof, Rocky Road, Cookies n Cream, Neopolitan, Banana, or the once far more prominent Rum Raisin. Rum Raisin used to be everywhere, Ben & Jerry's even made it. Now, we favor Cotton Candy, Mango, Cake Batter, Cinnamon, Dark Chocolate, and Cheesecake. Waffle cones are out, Waffle Bowls are in.

Strangely enough, one flavor notably absent from the ice cream majors is Green Tea, a surprise due to green tea's recent popularity. What will happen when those flavors are passé and we end up eating weird but tasty flavors?

Whatever. I'm going downstairs to eat some ice cream.

1 comment:

Seth said...

Back when I was a kid, licensing was around too. I definitely saw mickey mouse ice creams from those trucks.